


Rory and the Dragon

by cirque



Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Narrator, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: Dragons lived forever, didn’t they? Or was that only in the stories?
Relationships: Kid & Their Medieval Castle & Dragon Figurines That Come To Life - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Rory and the Dragon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



The cat had chewed the head off his blue dragon.

“Muuuuum!” Rory wailed, but it was useless; she was upstairs, in her office. He cried out for her anyway. “Stupid cat.” He aimed a kick at the furball, but missed intentionally. He didn’t hate Tinky, not really. But still, his dragon was headless.

“Did you swallow it Tinky?” He bent down and scanned under the sofa, under the kitchen table, behind the TV. The tiny blue head was lurking underneath his mum’s armchair. He sighed with such dramatic force that his fringe lifted off his forehead. The bruise under his left eye was almost healed, and it twinged at the touch of his breath.

“We have to have a funeral now,” he told Tinky seriously. “You better dress smart.” Rory pointed at the cat for emphasis. He stomped into his welly boots and slid open the dining room door, emitting a wave of freshly cut grass scent, and the sickly sweet aroma of the apples rotting at the base of the tree. He clumsily made his way down the center of the garden to his little potion-making lab. He stirred his current concoction in a forgotten plant pot with a wooden spoon. He frowned into it and added a few more juniper berries and watched them get swallowed up by the mud.

Rory was seven. Seven was his favourite age so far. He was getting stronger and he was allowed to stay up later. Being seven was great. The potion was getting hard to stir; that meant it was almost ready. He leaned down and whispered the magic word. 

He turned his back on the plant pot and bent down on the ground. He dug with his hands for a little while before getting annoyed and leaning up to grab his trowel where he had left it last time he was building mud pies. He dug a little hole, big enough for his dragon, and dropped the little plastic figurine in, head and all, covering it with mud and grass.

“Rest in pieces,” he said to the empty garden, then laughed at his own joke. Tinky came running across the grass to him. “Go away Tinky or I’ll call the police.” Still, Tinky approached the far end of the garden, where Rory’s lab was. Rory stamped on his buried dragon, for good measure. “You killed him Tinky.” He bent down onto his heels and leaned in close. “Good luck in heaven,” he whispered to his dragon, before pouring some of the potion onto the disturbed ground. He then placed a particularly heavy stone on top of the grave and scraped his hands off, deciding that it was good enough. Tinky climbed onto the garden fence and went to bother nextdoor’s bird table. 

He was going to continue foraging for his potion but his mum called him in for dinner, which was a shame, but they were having steak so he didn’t mind too much. Andrew was in a terrible mood, but Rory let it be.

That night he was nice and snug. Mum had finished reading Horrid Henry which was secretly Rory’s favourite, even though mum said Henry was a terrible role model. She kissed Rory right in the middle of his forehead. Tinky was sleeping at the foot of his bed; they were friends again. Mum left the door open a bit and the hall light was on, emitting a little sliver of yellow light. The house was silent. Everything was perfect. Rory snuggled down under the covers.

That was when he heard it. It sounded like when a moth did when it hits a light bulb, and he was alarmed for a quick second, because he hated moths. He nearly called his mum, but then he listened harder and realised it was coming from outside. He got out of bed, his bare feet sinking into the carpet. He pulled open the curtains in one swift movement, and he looked out into the pitch black beyond. He couldn’t see a thing.

Then it happened again. Another  _ thunk _ against his window. Something was trying to get in. Rory considered running for his mum, but he was seven now and too big for that. Andrew would hate him for being such a baby. He opened the window a tiny bit and stuck his mouth against the gap.

“Hello,” he whispered, “who is it?”

Nobody answered, just the wind. He moved his head away and something…  _ fluttered _ in through the window. A small something, with glossy beating wings and - and he looked, in shock, as his buried dragon began to circle around his bedroom.

“Your head’s back on!” he said, joyous. The dragon was really flying, as though it was a real dragon, like on TV. “How come you’re real?” The dragon didn’t answer him, but then he supposed dragons didn’t know how to talk, did they? He’d never met a dragon before. It landed on his bed and hopped along to sit beside him. Tinky was eyeing it, and Rory pushed the cat off his bed before the poor dragon got attacked again. He reached out a shaking hand and touched the dragon. It was still plastic, still hard and shiny, but it was warm now, as though it had a real body.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. It must have been the magic potion; he must have mixed just the right ingredients and said the proper magic word and everything. He smiled to himself; he was magic. He got back into bed and watched in the thin sliver of light as his dragon explored the whole room.

Rory wanted to take the dragon to school with him and show everyone, but he thought that might be too much of a risk, so he locked it in his wardrobe and decided to just get school over with as quickly as possible. They were doing adjectives and verbs, which was boring. When it was over, he ran up to his mum with such enthusiasm that he nearly collided with her.

“How was school?” she asked him, like always.

“Extravagant,” he said, using one of his new words.

He walked home with a very nervous energy. He kept jumping up and down. They couldn’t move quickly enough. When they got into the house he kicked off his shoes and ran up the stairs, into his bedroom and up to his wardrobe. Andrew was standing in the dining room and Rory just rushed on past him, with a bravery he wouldn’t normally be able to summon. He pulled the bedroom door open and the dragon came out with a mighty buzz. He had half-expected it to go back to being just a toy; he had wondered if maybe he had just dreamt that it was real. It fluttered around his head like a miniature aeroplane, making a little humming noise of annoyance or maybe greeting. It glinted in the uplight of his ceiling bulb.

“Hello,” Rory giggled.

He heard his mum’s footsteps on the landing. “Rory,” she yelled up, “Jake’s here to see you. I’m sending him up.” Rory froze, and then lurched upright and tried to catch the dragon. It fell onto the carpet like it had been struck dead.

Jake pushed open the bedroom door and hollered his ‘hello’. “What are you doing, loser?” Rory looked up at his friend, surprised. The dragon was still on the floor, motionless. Was it dead?

“Nothing!” Rory said, sounding guilty as anything.

“Whatever,” Jake said. He strode over to Rory’s bed, almost standing on the dragon as he did so. “Want to go outside and play kerby?” Rory really wanted to stay in, with the dragon, but he couldn’t think of a way to do that without coming off as suspicious. It looked for all the world like a normal toy dragon, motionless and mundane. Rory prodded it with his toe: nothing. He couldn’t very well explain to Jake why he was so surprised, so he laughed it off.

“Yeah, let’s go,” and he followed Jake from his room, the dragon lying where it fell.

He twigged on what it meant when his mum came in the room later. The dragon had been flying around like normal (or, whatever normal meant for an alive toy dragon) when his mum had entered the room, phone in one hand, laundry in another.

“I want these putting away properly,” she warned him, but he wasn’t watching - his eyes were on the dragon, which seized up and flopped onto his bed like a hunk of plastic. And then he realised: it had to pretend to be ordinary when other people were about, but with Rory it could be real. “Rory?” his mum prodded.

“Yes mum,” he said. He took the laundry off her; it was some pyjamas and several balled up school socks. 

“And Andrew wants to go out for dinner tonight, how does that sound?”

“Are we having pizza?”

“I think he wants to go to the Chinese place.”

“Okay,” Rory said. He pulled open his pyjama drawer and inserted the clean ones, and his mother left the room. As soon as she shut the door, the dragon fizzed back into life, taking up its circuit around the room again. 

Rory threw the socks into his sock drawer, one by one. “Goal!” he said, as he hit the jackpot. The dragon took a sharp corner and narrowly avoided colliding with his head. “I wish you could speak,” he said to it. “I wonder why you can’t?” He thought that if it was going to be real it might as well talk. He remembered something at school about the voice box, and how it was nestled in the hollow of his neck. Dragons didn’t have a voice box, not even plastic ones. He wondered, sadly, how long his dragon would live. Dragons lived forever, didn’t they? Or was that only in the stories?

He looked over to the castle that lurked in the corner. He hadn’t played with it in  _ ages _ , a week at least. He had a whole collection of different dragons and knights and even a princess or two. His mum wished he played with it more; it had been expensive, he knew, last Christmas’s big present. He considered it seriously for a moment. “I wonder?”

He surmised that it was the potion that held the magic, not the dragons themselves. Everything he buried and covered in the potion came to life. He had a whole lot of them, red dragons and green ones and even one that was striped like a zebra and which galloped everywhere like a pony. The knight came to life and swung his tiny wobbly sword at Rory. The princess had on a flowy dress and a silly hat, and she waved joyously at him. He loved watching them gambol about; they were a funny lot. They played together in the castle in Rory’s room, and Rory watched them, more enrapt than he ever was in the TV. 

He built an extension for the castle out of Lego, with flowers and a tower and even a police car. The dragons flew around like tiny birds, swooping down to land on the police car and send it shaking across the ground on its uneven wheels like there was an earthquake. Rory liked learning about earthquakes; he had hungered for the knowledge that even the world was unsteady at times. 

He still preferred his first dragon. The others he locked in his wardrobe when he wasn’t about or when he was asleep, but he let the first blue dragon have free roam all the time. He let it flutter where it wanted, even when it wanted to follow him downstairs and into the kitchen to score some treats. He didn’t need to worry - every time someone else came near, mum or Andrew or whoever, it stiffened up and fell to the ground in a split second. He scooped it into his hands and waited until the person had left and the magic came back, just like that. It was a small magic, but he marvelled every time he saw it.

Rory took the slap without flinching. At first. By the fourth and fifth contact on his legs he was crying like a baby, outright wailing and using his hands to try and shove his attacker off. Andrew, as always, was stronger than him.

“Why did you leave your homework so late?” Andrew hissed. He raised his hand again and Rory flinched. He couldn’t control it; it was just something that happened to his body. He was crying like a proper baby. Andrew would hate that.

“I forgot it,” Rory wailed. “It’s only half a page of reading. I said I’ll do it after dinner, I promise.” Rory looked towards his bedroom door, imagining the stairs beyond. His mum was down there, cooking bolognese. He could almost call out for her. 

Andrew slapped him again. “And that’s for your cheek.”

“I never! You can’t hit me, my mum won’t let you.”

“Is she here now? Is she stopping me? She asks me to hit you. It’s the only way to get the message into your thick head.” Andrew was using his quiet voice. It reminded Rory of a far-away thunderstorm. It sounded like angry rain and the way it spitted onto the windows. Andrew’s face was red with the effort.

Rory thought about his mum. Andrew was right: she was letting him hit him. Rory thought of his dragon, and wished it were larger, wished it could breathe real fire, wished the dragon and the knight would come and get the message into Andrew’s thick head.

Mum called something up the stairs and Andrew decided to leave, but not before he squeezed Rory’s wrist extra tight. Rory finally wiped away his tears. The dragon fluttered into life and Rory let it land on his shoulder, let it trot up to his ear and rub its plasticy face against his neck.

“It’s ok,” he told it, “I know you’d help me if you could. I don’t blame you.” Andrew was right, he was stupid. He was supposed to be seven years old, too old to believe in dragons and knights, yet here he was, talking to one. He was too old for that Disney stuff. Still, Rory got down on his knees and opened the wardrobe doors, letting the sundry creatures crawl all over him, just to be sure they were real after all.

The potion ran out rather quickly. He used the last of it when he brought his new dragon to life. He’d bugged mum to buy it for him, and she had finally said yes. It was larger than the others, much larger. It was the size of Tinky, the colour of fire. He buried it in the garden and did the whole routine, saying the magic word in a magic voice, like he was in a church talking to God. He waited until nightfall and then there it was, batting at his bedroom window. He let it in with a big grin and, when he crawled back into bed, it settled on the pillow beside him, its spiny tail curled around his hand, keeping him safe. He slept easy that night.

The next day he marched out into the back garden, the sun hot on his neck. He mixed mud and apple pips, dead leaves and the ink from a neon highlighter. He added honey from the kitchen. He stirred in some gummy bears, slow and steady. He poured in all the magic he held in his seven-year-old body, and squeezed his eyes shut, and  _ wished _ with all his might. He wished and he wished until it was all he was thinking about. He even forgot to breathe. He let images of Andrew, red and angry, cloud his mind, and he wished and wished for some way to just  _ show him. _ He wished the dragon could live even when other people were watching. He wished the dragon could save him. He wished Andrew could shrink into plastic and then maybe Tinky would bite  _ his  _ head off. He wished and wished, and whispered the magic word over and over, and when he was done he took his new dragon and plunged it into the mucky magical mess, covering it all over. He closed his eyes and leaned back, and the sun washed over his face.

When Andrew came into his room again, Rory was ready. The dragon flopped onto the bed, lifeless, but Rory held it up high. He had prepared for this.

“You’d better stay away from me,” he warned his stepdad, “else my dragon will breathe fire on you.”

Andrew laughed, an ugly laugh from the bottom of his stomach. “Your dragon? Oooh, not the dragon!” He raised his hand and slapped the toy away. Rory felt it grow  _ warm _ in his hands. It twitched its tail and unmistakably moved. It opened its wings, long and glorious in the half-light of his night lamp. 

“The fuck?” Andrew backed away. The dragon settled into a hover before him, and Rory grinned, victorious. 

“I warned you,” he said, as cocky as he dared.

“What kind of toy is that?”

“It’s not a toy,” Rory corrected him. “It’s a real dragon. It’s  _ my _ real dragon.”

“You’re too old for stories,” Andrew hissed, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the dragon, and Rory knew it was working.

“It’s a real dragon, and you’d better stay away from me, or else.”

The dragon fluttered close to Andrew’s face, and he batted it away. He was scared, Rory could tell. He was freaked out. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing. He was  _ scared. _ Rory liked that. 

Andrew reached forward and grabbed a handful of Rory’s pyjama top, and yanked him close. The dragon flew frantically around their heads, trying to divebomb Andrew.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on here,” Andrew said, “And I don’t care. Stop this crap. Is it a remote control dragon? How are you doing it?”

Rory thought about telling him the truth, but would he believe it? He wasn’t supposed to lie. “Magic,” he said, as though it was obvious. “I have lots of them.”

“You’re crazy,” Andrew snarled, and he grabbed hold of the circling dragon, and threw it down onto the floor. He stomped on it several times, the thin plastic of its tenuous wings buckling dangerously. It stretched itself out and returned to the air, coming to settle on Rory’s shoulder. “You’re a fuckin’ brat!”

Andrew ran for his mum, and Rory wasn’t surprised. He waited for her, sitting cross-legged on the bedroom rug with his big dragon stalking around his body. It hissed as she entered but Rory placed a hand on its spiny back, settling it.

“Hello mum,” he said, and hoped she wasn’t too angry.

“Andrew says you’ve attacked him?”

“It wasn’t me, it was the dragon.”

“Oh  _ come on _ Rory, you’re too big for that!”

“No, honest mum - look!” He brandished his hands towards the dragon, who hopped up unprompted onto his waiting palm. It wavered perilously and gave out a silent scream, just a fluttering of empty air coming from its mouth. 

Rory’s mum didn’t know what to think. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She squinted her eyes and frowned at him. She sighed, several times. “Rory -” but she was bewitched. The dragon was beautiful, Rory knew.

“He hit me first,” Rory said, in a small voice, barely a mouse whisper. “He always hits me.”

His mum tore her eyes from the dragon. She scowled at her son. “What?”

“He hits me.” 

She sat on her knees opposite him, her face serious. “Where?”

He pointed wordlessly at his legs and his stomach, and rolled up the sleeve of his school shirt, showing the impressive bruise that was blooming on his wrist. It was the purple of a thundery sky. His mum reached out with shaking fingers to touch it, but she pulled away at the last moment. “Rory… Why didn’t you say anything?”

“He said you told him to do it.”

“I - I would  _ never...  _ Rory love, I would never do that.”

Rory looked up at her. She had her truth-telling face on. He moved the dragon closer to her, so that she could see the smooth way it unfolded its wings, could see the lithe movements of its stubby plastic legs. “It really is a magic dragon you know. They all are, but this is the only one that moves when other people are about. I don’t know why. I think I must’ve put extra magic into the potion. Look.” The dragon took flight, weaving between them. It was beautiful to watch.

Rory’s mum let out a breath she had been holding in. “It’s gorgeous,” she said, and Rory saw that she was crying.

  
  



End file.
